WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Mordor
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◈ I Became the Second-in-Command in a Romance Fantasy Novel ◈
Chapter 53: Two-Timing (2)
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I stared at Senior Lorellia in disbelief as she suddenly linked arms with me and acted like we were close.
No, we were close, but not this close.
‘Play along.’
Senior Lorellia smiled and silently mouthed the words so only I could see them.
It seemed she had done it because Risel was an aspiring knight too and could hear even a quiet whisper.
‘You can't just spring this on me.’
People were already calling me the Saintess's boyfriend.
And now I was two-timing her.
Anyone in the know understood it was fake, but most people at the Academy weren't in the know.
‘This is going to make me look like actual trash.’
‘Don't worry. I have a plan.’
Could I really trust that?
If Violet had said it, I would've told her to stop talking bullshit.
Still, since Senior Lorellia was the one saying it, I decided to trust her for now.
“Fancy meeting you here, Senior.”
“Hm, indeed. Were you watching the matches?”
“Yes. I heard the Little Sword Emperor was on a winning streak.”
“Come to think of it, you were close with the Little Sword Emperor, weren't you?”
She slipped her arm through mine as if showing me off, and my eyes narrowed for a moment.
Still, with that romance-fantasy-villain-looking guy panicking over there, I had no choice but to play along.
“Big Sister, who is this...?”
As I naturally went along with Senior Lorellia's act, the romance-fantasy villain lookalike I had been waiting for approached and asked.
“Ah, seeing my lover somewhere so unexpected got me a little excited. Let me introduce him. This is my lover, Adam Smith. He's from the Leon Kingdom.”
In other words, an international relationship.
Watching Senior Lorellia introduce me so shamelessly, I realized once again that she really was a noble.
Who knew someone could be this brazen?
“Adam, this is Risel. He's my cousin, so don't get too jealous.”
Every word out of her mouth made me wonder whether this was really Senior Lorellia.
No matter how much she didn't want to look weak in front of Risel.
Could a person really change that much?
It was enough to make me think this might be her true nature.
“Adam... Could it be that Adam?”
“That's right.”
Just look at her smiling wickedly as Risel froze upon hearing my name.
Was this what a romance-fantasy villainess was like?
“How could you take the Saintess's lover?”
Suppressing the outburst threatening to escape, Risel abruptly lowered his voice and stared at Senior Lorellia.
His face clearly asked what the hell was going on.
Senior Lorellia savored that expression, then swept back her hair like a character in a comic.
“I'm rather charming, aren't I?”
“...”
“...”
Risel and I stared at her blankly. Even their escort knights looked dumbfounded, but Senior Lorellia's expression didn't change as she shamelessly continued.
“So I took him.”
“Since my fiancé was taken from me too, this is only fair.”
At her words, Risel and the escort knights silently looked at me.
“...”
I had no choice but to avert my gaze.
Honestly, I was too embarrassed.
“He's too good a man to be taken by the Saintess. Even the Little Sword Emperor can't defeat him. The fact that he isn't from the Empire could be an obstacle, but love is...”
Was she trying to humiliate me?
As Senior Lorellia enthusiastically laid the praise on thick beside me, my image of her came crashing down.
“Adam... was it?”
Apparently, the other side felt the same way. Risel had reached the point of acting as though Senior Lorellia wasn't even there.
“Yes?”
“I heard you're second in the Swordsmanship Department.”
Once the atmosphere shifted, Senior Lorellia shut her mouth.
If that had been his goal, I'd have wanted to compliment him on a fine move.
“My grades do put me there. Why do you ask?”
But that probably wasn't his intention.
So I tossed out the bait and pretended not to know.
Risel raised the corner of his mouth and provocatively said to me,
“Then let's have a match.”
Just as I thought. He'd talked about wanting to fight the Little Sword Emperor, so apparently it hadn't been empty talk.
“Sure.”
I nodded at his confident expression.
As Risel said he would reserve an arena, I eyed the back of his head for a moment.
“How should I deal with him?”
I asked Senior Lorellia what I should do with that guy.
“Well, obviously.”
Without a moment's hesitation, Senior Lorellia said,
“Crush him thoroughly.”
Seeing her say that, it seemed she really had a lot built up against him.
* * *
The Doomed Sword wasn't very effective against an opponent I was meeting for the first time.
If I didn't know their swordsmanship, I couldn't get an accurate read on them.
That made unfamiliar opponents the Doomed Sword's hard counter.
“Urgh!”
That was only if the opponent had some skill.
Even with someone on the Little Sword Emperor's level, I could roughly get a read after clashing swords a few times.
Against a swordsman at this level, I didn't need to understand his swordsmanship.
“Hm.”
Just watching him move was enough.
I could thoroughly break down and analyze him.
“Damn it!”
Risel, the villain candidate, gritted his teeth.
Well, it made sense.
I kept poking at the flow of his swordsmanship and cutting it off.
If he'd been crushed in one blow, that would've been one thing. But he was being thoroughly toyed with, so anyone would get angry.
Still.
“Hm.”
What could he do even if he got angry?
I expressed that lightly through my sword.
I wasn't blocking his attacks. I was stopping him from even attempting them.
Just by watching his footwork and the movements of his arms and joints, I could predict his next move.
Then, based on that, I shut down the action he wanted to take from the start.
To someone who didn't know any better, it probably looked like a fairly fierce exchange.
A few spectators were actually watching in admiration.
Which made it a little disappointing.
“Urgh! No? Then how about this?”
Risel was so focused on my sword that he didn't even have room to look around.
If he saw the reactions around him, he'd realize even more clearly that he was being toyed with.
“You bastard...!”
But if this was the best he could do, he wouldn't have that kind of room to spare.
“At this level, you'd rank near the bottom of the Academy.”
It wasn't an attack meant to get under his skin.
It was simply a casual assessment that slipped out before I knew it.
I'd crossed swords with most of the Swordsmanship Department.
After the Sword Emperor, I was probably the person who knew the first-year Swordsmanship Department students best.
As befitted a collateral branch of the Empire's greatest ducal house, his innate mana reserves and the execution of his swordsmanship weren't bad.
But instead of wielding his swordsmanship, he was just being dragged along by it.
He didn't properly understand swordsmanship, so he couldn't even stop me from interrupting its flow midway through.
I only said it because he really was near the bottom of the Academy.
“What did you say?”
It was like I'd pressed a button. Risel charged at me with gritted teeth.
His already unstable sword path shook even more, and he reached the point where he'd destroy himself without me even needing to interrupt the flow.
Wow. He was going to lose all on his own if I just left him alone.
Wasn't that the true Doomed Sword?
“...”
Watching Risel fall into a self-destructive spiral, I glanced at Senior Lorellia.
The toy's broken. What should I do?
Senior Lorellia seemed to understand my look.
After thinking for a moment, she lightly made a throat-slitting gesture.
She really must have a lot built up against him.
So I decided to play with him for another thirty minutes or so.
* * *
Risel couldn't even last thirty minutes and lost on his own after ten minutes. He ran away after spouting the classic villain line, “Grrr, just you wait until next time!”
That left Senior Lorellia and me alone, so I decided to ask without wasting any time.
“So what's the plan?”
Even though I hadn't specified what I meant, Senior Lorellia seemed to know exactly what I was asking. She nodded and answered.
“Hm, well.”
Then, as if it were nothing, she proudly declared,
“I'll say that I confessed first.”
My mind went blank for a moment, and I could only ask in a stupid voice.
“What?”
What was that supposed to mean?
Was this some technique passed down among the Empire's high nobility that I didn't know about?
It could be a cultural difference, so I trusted Senior Lorellia and waited for her explanation.
And my reward for waiting was this.
“If you seduce someone first, you're trash. But if they fall for you first, that means you're capable.”
That explained absolutely nothing.
“...What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Hm. If I fell for you on my own and confessed to you, then it wouldn't be your fault.”
“What kind of trash logic is that...?”
It was such a trashy thing to say that some of my true feelings slipped out.
“Hm, depending on how you look at it, you could call it a trashy statement.”
Even so, she shamelessly nodded and admitted it.
I could understand a little better why she was the villainess in the original story.
“Isn't it trashy no matter how you look at it?”
“You're more romantic than I thought, Junior. But what's wrong with a capable man having several women?”
“...What?”
What kind of insane thing was that?
But when she called me romantic rather than conservative, I realized something.
“It's an era where women can take care of several men too, as long as they have the ability. Even if Daisy is the Saintess, she has no right to monopolize you.”
Right. This was a medieval fantasy world.
Even His Majesty the King, who was wrapped around the Queen's finger, had no concubines, but he did have two more wives.
So Senior Lorellia was right.
A man who openly hit on women everywhere was a trashy bastard.
But a man who just stood there while women approached him first because they liked him was an incredibly capable man.
He could be treated like the legendary alpha male!
“So you can at least go on dates.”
At that confident statement, I nearly nodded without thinking.
“Other people will think that too, right?”
“...Probably?”
Senior Lorellia avoided my eyes at the end, and I had no choice but to glare at her again.
* * *
As they waited for the Pope, whom they would soon meet again, the saying that words traveled a thousand miles without feet proved true.
They were simply sitting and waiting for the Holy Kingdom's delegation when a rumor naturally reached their ears.
The rumor was that Lady Lorellia of House Jeyka had gotten herself a man.
So far, it was ordinary Academy gossip.
But when they heard that the man at the center of the rumor was the Saintess's lover, silence filled the room.
Violet could only tilt her head.
‘What?’
What kind of bullshit was that?
Violet blinked as she thought.
No, boss.
‘Didn't you say you didn't want to get involved in a romance fantasy?’
That was why he hadn't even looked at the Flower Arrangement Club.
So why was he two-timing the romance-fantasy heroine and the villainess(?)?
Was he really trying to change careers from a romance-fantasy extra into the protagonist of a romance-fantasy extra novel?
“Hm-hm~”
As Violet was thinking that, a strange hum came from the seat beside her.
With a creak, Violet slowly turned her head.
“Are you angry?”
“Not at all.”
She was angry.
Even if it was fake, anyone would be angry if their lover openly cheated on them.
...That was why she was angry, right?
Violet couldn't bring herself to ask that. All she could do was watch Daisy's mood and wait.
Author's Note
Yesterday, I saw a news article.
Apparently, P0joa had never dated, so they were using AI.
I'm the same, so it feels like writing the romance parts takes longer than expected.
Because of that, when I can't think of descriptions for the middle, I skip ahead and write the later parts first.
For this chapter too, I wrote the final 500 characters first, then wrote the last scene and continued from there.
Instead of using AI, though, I write while thinking, “This is what Gomsudal would do.”
P.S. I've opened a Q&A to celebrate one million.
I opened it while revising the manuscript, so I saw that a few comments had been posted...
Seeing comments that made me think, “Is this really Novelpia...?” is already making me dizzy.
Footnotes:
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